


Until Divorce Do Us Part

by myglassesaredirty



Series: It Had to be You [4]
Category: Psych
Genre: Angst, Divorce, F/M, Post-Relationship, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-06
Updated: 2019-01-06
Packaged: 2019-10-05 06:34:18
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,318
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17319812
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/myglassesaredirty/pseuds/myglassesaredirty
Summary: "I take thee to be my lawfully wedded spouse, to have and to hold from this day forward, for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish, till divorce do us part."The first time Maddy and Henry remove their wedding rings.





	Until Divorce Do Us Part

**Author's Note:**

> Listen. _Listen._ I love my favorite fictional parents, and I'm literally planning an au where they just. Don't ever divorce, and I've even written a fic where they get back together, but this idea just wouldn't leave my mind, and I needed the angst in my life because I'm a bit low on it. Enjoy.

“Stop crying, stop crying.” She buries her face in her hands while another sob rips from her throat. Her tears make her hands wet, and she slides her hands down her face. She reaches out to turn off the lamp by her bedside, but the light catches the diamond in her ring, and she stops cold.

 

She’s divorced now.

 

Maddy presses her lips tightly together, trying desperately to hold in another sob, grabs her left hand in her right, and pulls her left hand closer to her face. Her wedding ring still feels so familiar to her, like it’s a part of her and not just an accessory. For the past few years, she’s even slept with her ring on.

 

She should take it off.

 

She reaches to slide the ring off her finger, but her hands shake, almost as if sentencing her to keep it on, as if they’re reminding her of the husband she left behind. Taking off the ring means forgetting how hard he fought for their marriage, how many hours he cut from work, how he tried to make their marriage work. He bought her flowers and chocolate and teddy bears. After every bad fight, he made her pancakes and coffee, and then he’d sit down and talk through their disagreement in a far more peaceful manner.

 

The day she told him she was leaving him, he begged her to stay. He held her in his arms, and for the first time in fifteen years, he cried.

 

She hated herself for making him cry, for breaking his heart. She almost went back on her decision, almost called her new employer to refuse the job offer. But, in her mind, she had to take it. She had to do this.

 

The bed, she notices, is too large without Henry there. When the bad dreams come, she’s left to deal with them on her own, instead of curling into his side and letting him reassure her that everything’s okay, that he’d never let anything hurt her.

 

He was  _ wonderful _ to her; he always treated her with love and respect, and what does she do to him in turn?

 

She leaves him. She tells him that what he’s doing isn’t good enough, and that his offers to move are invalid, that she has to do this thing on her own. She’s been a Spencer almost as long as she was a Baker, she told him. She doesn’t know who she is anymore.

 

In the loneliness of the room, of this room that’s too large for just her, she knows exactly who she is: she’s a wife and a mother. She’s Madeleine Spencer, the wife of an amazing sergeant-turned-police-detective and the mother of the most brilliant teenager in Santa Barbara.

 

But she’s not Madeleine Spencer anymore. She might keep the name, might still even wear her ring, but by all definitions, she’s divorced. The ring serves no purpose. She has no husband.

 

Her fingers cover the little band of gold, but the diamond still glints in the light. She can’t do it. She can’t do this to Henry.

 

It’s been nearly six months, but on April 14, she finally slides off her wedding ring, opens her jewelry box, and shoves it closed before she can change her mind.

 

When she cries herself to sleep, she knows it’s her fault and her fault alone.

 

**

 

He slams the bedroom door closed behind him. He knows, in the back of his mind, that Shawn would have jumped if he were even fucking  _ here, _ but Henry’s way past caring about that. He’s pissed off at the world, and all he sees is red.

 

She shouldn’t have moved out. She shouldn’t have left. She should have just let him and Shawn move with her, and then maybe everything would have been alright, but as it stands  _ now, _ Henry’s the only one at home, and his son is in a jail cell for the weekend.

 

He presses his fists into his eyes and sits heavily on the bed. It’s the same one he and Maddy have used for years, but now he realizes how large it is, now that she’s not here to be next to him.

 

Henry grits his teeth and fully resists the urge to pound his fist into the wall, the lamp, or the bed. He just waits for it to pass.

 

Shawn should have seen this coming. Maddy’s been out of town more and more frequently, and they were just running out of things to say. How could they possibly make a marriage work without being with each other and talking to each other?

 

Henry screams in frustration.  _ Maddy _ was the one who didn’t want to make it work;  _ Maddy _ was the one who started distancing herself. Should he have done more things she wanted to do? Yes, he fully admits that, but he wanted them to  _ work. _ He would have moved. He would have quit his fucking job. Anything to have prevented this.

 

He pulls his hands away from his eyes and glares at his wedding band. It taunts him now, reminds him that he wasn’t good enough to make her stay, that even his own son rebelled against him. It laughs at him, telling him that he’s alone in this massive house, and soon enough, it’s just going to be him because Shawn is going to leave, just like Maddy did.

 

Henry grabs his wedding band with his right hand and rips off the ring. He stands forcefully and storms over to the bathroom that seems so empty now, now that Madeleine’s toothbrush and toiletries are gone. He grabs the handle to the middle drawer, rips open the drawer, and throws the ring inside, slamming the drawer shut.

 

When he sits back down on the mattress, the anger has dissipated. His breaths still come heavily, but it’s less from rage and more from controlled grief.

 

The truth is, he  _ wasn’t  _ good enough. He didn’t pour in enough time into his family, he didn’t do things Maddy loved, he didn’t listen to Shawn all that often. He pushed his family to do things his way, and he only listened when Maddy finally called him on his crap. He realized that he was doing too little too late for his wife, and the only thing that could have prevented Shawn’s petty crime would have been Maddy.

 

He was a crappy husband, and he’s been an equally crappy father. He pushed Shawn into being a cop, even if Shawn didn’t want it. He didn’t give Shawn the opportunity to explore other avenues, and he didn’t let Shawn have a childhood like Gus had, like Shawn needed. He arrested his own damn son. That falls under the list of Things Crappy Dads Do.

 

And with Madeleine…

 

_ He _ wanted the traditional vows at their wedding,  _ he _ wanted to pour as much time as physically possible into his work,  _ he _ wanted to be part of a secret organization. She wanted to travel; he laughed, shook his head, and insisted on camping trips instead. She wanted one date night a month; he said it was too much effort. She tried to fix their marriage earlier; he said no, he had to work.

 

Henry swallows past the lump in his throat, stands slowly, and shuffles back to the bathroom, where he pulls open the drawer again. He picks up his old wedding ring, rubs it between his fingers, and slips it back on.

 

He just wants the illusion for one night. Just wants to believe – for one night – that Maddy is out of town for a conference and Shawn is spending the night at Gus’s. He wants to pretend, just for one night, that he’s still married and his life hasn’t completely fallen apart.

 

Just for one night.

 

Tomorrow, he’ll take his wedding ring off again, and he’ll learn to adjust, but he needs it tonight.

**Author's Note:**

> Like it, love it, hate it? Leave a comment below or go to my tumblr, @ my-glasses-are-dirty, and tell me what you think!


End file.
